Spanish researchers petition for taxpayer donations

Spanish scientists have collected more than 32,000 signatures in less than a week in support of a petition that urges Spain’s tax authority to adopt a novel way of raising funds for research: adding a checkbox to income tax forms that would allow taxpayers to direct 0.7% of their contribution to science.

The petition, launched on 3 January, responds to the announcement at the end of December that Spain’s research budget would lose €600 million. In an editorial last month, Nature called for Spain, Italy, and Greece to reinforce their science budgets.

Neuroscience graduate student Francisco J. Hernández of the University of Cambridge, UK, whose blog post inspired the petition, says he knows of no other country which allows individual taxpayers to boost science funding through its tax form. But the United States allows taxpayers to allocate $3 to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund by checking a box on their income tax return, and Spanish taxpayers can already choose whether 0.7% of their income tax will go to the Catholic Church or various social organisations. “I imagine the checkbox in favor of the Church and other causes is a Spanish peculiarity,” Hernández told Nature. The Catholic Church in Spain collected around €249 million from the tax form checkbox last year, according to Spanish newspaper Público.